New York Public Library

Click here for more information. Discover the counterculture of the 1960s and '70s. From communal living and forays into expanded consciousness, to tensions around race, politics, sexuality and the environment, this exhibition explores the breadth and significance of this period. This event is part ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, August 3, 2018
Last year marked the 60th birthday of composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein’s classic Broadway show West Side Story, famously made into a 10 Academy Award-winning movie version in 1961 starring among others the Puerto Rico-born actress Rita ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, July 31, 2018
At this summer’s 45th annual Umbria Jazz Festival in the ancient central Italian town of Perugia, the party atmosphere was omnipresent. It was hot in temperature and the songs were broiling. Musically the scene captured a rare meeting of ...

By Christopher Caggiano, Contributing Writer, August 14, 2018
Sometimes shows come to Broadway that automatically get the online theater wags sharpening their knives. Before a show has even played its first preview, the theaterati start taking bets on when it will close, and polishing off their “What ...

By Christopher Caggiano, Contributing Writer, August 13, 2018
Before the 1980s, Boston was a major out-of-town stop for plays and musicals before they went to Broadway. The economics of such tryouts have changed drastically, as has the standard model for developing new plays and musicals, and Boston’...

By A. E. Colas, Contributing Writer, August 13, 2018
The Hudson Valley has a special place in the heart of Art Break. So many of our favorite artists spent their summers in the region with friends and family, working on projects, and enjoying the beautiful landscape, just ...

By Doug Hall, Contributing Writer, August 10, 2018
This year’s Newport Jazz Festival highlighted an incredibly diverse selection of women performers and women ensemble groups. The festival’s founder George Wein, in his newsletter “Notes from the Wein Machine” (March, 2018), was very direct in his statement ...

By Megan Wrappe, Contributing Writer, August 9, 2018
Discovering how life works is what resonates the most in Lisa Langseth’s one-woman show Beloved, starring Ellinor DiLorenzo and directed by Kathy Curtiss. The play begins with the character Katarina rummaging around her grandmother’s cottage, putting things ...

By Diana Mott, Contributing Writer, August 6, 2018
Before We're Gone ended it's run at 13th Street Repertory Theatre on August 5 with hopes of moving uptown and, with caveats, it deserves another chance to be seen. It is a small play, made for a small stage in ...

By Brian Taylor, Contributing Writer, August 6, 2018
The Mostly Mozart Festival's recent presentation of the International Contemporary Ensemble at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College was a welcome respite from the summer's punishing mugginess. Entitled "Grand Pianola Music," after the John Adams piece ...

By A. E. Colas, Contributing Writer, August 6, 2018
Here at Art Break, we’ve often complained that people don’t realize how much art is available to see outside New York City. Case in point: the great state of Connecticut. Never been? Well, you’re missing ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, August 3, 2018
Last year marked the 60th birthday of composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein’s classic Broadway show West Side Story, famously made into a 10 Academy Award-winning movie version in 1961 starring among others the Puerto Rico-born actress Rita Moreno. This year ...

By Christopher Caggiano, Contributing Writer, August 3, 2018
After the disastrous 2011 Broadway revisal of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, it was looking like we might never see that show in New York City again. Peter Parnell’s ridiculous, gender-switching libretto, combined with Michael Mayer’...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, July 19, 2018
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the New York-based photographer since 1992 Adriana Mateo not only engages the viewer with her art work but also in the process of capturing her image makes an intimate connection with the artists themselves. ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor, July 18, 2018
Carnegie Hall debuts its National Youth Orchestra Jazz—22 members between the ages of 16-19 from 16 states—on July 27 at Stern Auditorium. What promises to be a rousing concert of teenage jazz spirit will be directed by renowned trumpeter Sean ...

By Doug Hall, Contributing Writer, July 10, 2018
Celebrating its 39th year, the Montréal Jazz Festival has remained true to its mission as stated by president/director general Jacques-André Dupont to offer “a massive festive urban event with a major component of free programming” while also ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, July 6, 2018
In the late ‘80s, I was still relatively a jazz rookie after having followed the many veins of rock and pop beforehand. But jazz was always sneaking in during that time until the flood gates opened when I was asked to cover the Chicago Jazz ...

By Doug Hall, Contributing Writer, June 22, 2018
In a recent conversation, André Ménard, co-founder and artistic director of the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, gives an overview of the breadth and scale of the outdoor and indoor venues and range of musicians (over 3,000) and concert ...

By David Rubien, Contributing Writer, June 21, 2018
A pillar of the New York improvised music community since the 1970s, bassist-composer William Parker is leading a residency at the Stone June 26-30. He says he will be exploring life in its component terms: vibrations, light, love.
That has been ...

By Denin Koch, Contributing Writer, June 20, 2018
On their 2018 release Introspection on Jazzheads Records, guitarist Roni Ben-Hur and bassist Harvie S succeed in presenting a guitar trio record that captures the timeless tradition of the ensemble while also producing exciting new sounds and ...

By David Rubien, Contributing Writer, June 15, 2018
When a large percentage of jazz guitarists under the age of 50 tell you that their primary influence was Jimi Hendrix, you know something interesting is going on. While the guitar has become as prevalent in jazz as almost any other axe, it is also ...

By Denin Koch, Contributing Writer, June 14, 2018
Guitarist Steve Tibbetts’ long association with ECM has produced nine albums that span influences from Southeast Asian gamelan to Americana to jazz fusion. His 2018 release, Life of, is a quiet, meditative record that Tibbetts describes as a ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, May 8, 2018
Ornette Coleman, who dared to step to the edge of jazz boundaries and break the rules in search of improvisational freedom with his free jazz, was once considered a renegade and outsider. In testament to his alto saxophone and composer genius, in ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, May 4, 2018
At my first attempt to contact piano master Fred Hersch, an email message popped up on my screen: “I am on silent retreat…I will have no access to any electronic devices.” However, during his retreat at Insight Meditation Society in ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, April 30, 2018
When virtuoso tabla master Zakir Hussain served as one of SFJAZZ’s artistic directors in 2015-2016, he told an audience gathered to hear his reflections on the power of artistic expression: “Music is a force, it’s something that is a ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, April 16, 2018
Every year, New York’s nonprofit the Jazz Foundation of America—whose motto is “Saving jazz and blues…one musician at a time”—helps to be a key factor for helping musicians who have faced natural disasters and other downtowns due ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, April 11, 2018
In 2017, then-44-year-old clarinetist/saxophonist Mike McGinnis experienced his longtime fantasy of forming a trio with two of his elder-jazz heroes, pianist Art Lande and electric bassist Steve Swallow. It became a striking reality of ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, April 5, 2018
Deemed as one of the greatest guitarists of all time thanks in part to his high-profile gig with rock band Wilco since 2004, Nels Cline can be an experimental monster as an intrepid slayer of strings. While he can burst with blasts and surge ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, March 15, 2018
When BAM and the World Music Institute present legendary pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, the show will focus on his return to the Jazz Epistles, the bebopping group he co-founded and co-led in the apartheid-strangled South Africa that recorded its ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, March 9, 2018
To illustrate how topsy-turvy the modern music world is today, consider 31-year-old rising-star vocalist Camille Bertault, who will perform for two nights at Jazz Standard, March 20-21. Instead of being discovered by a savvy record company ...

By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, February 12, 2018
In case we’ve never met, there’s something you should know about me: I’m a little loony on the subject of Aaron Tveit.
It all started a decade ago when I snagged a $10 preview ticket to an off-Broadway show I knew nothing about. For ten ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, February 9, 2018
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s ideological goals could not be more evident from merely perusing the upcoming event listings for the most intimate space in its arsenal, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. The nightspot runs on a daily basis with ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, February 9, 2018
After the dust had settled from the 2000 demolishing of the once-touted, then-mocked New York Coliseum at Columbus Circle, the majestic twin-towered Time Warner Center rose from the ashes a few years later and revitalized the neighborhood as ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, February 5, 2018
When the Cuban-born, New York-based David Virelles took the stage at the Jazz Standard on January 30, he exuded a confident air of upending the typical piano-led ensemble. He didn’t pose with long runs of bombast or stretch out with ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, January 8, 2018
As a result of his successful summer jazz festival founded in 1973 in the Umbria region of Italy, Carlo Pagnotta, the artistic director of the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, started a new festival twenty-five years ago in the historic ...

By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, January 5, 2018
What started 13 years ago as an inspired goal of giving voice to the plethora of relatively unknown but immensely talented jazz musicians toiling in the multitude of the New York’s tiny and obscure clubs, the NYC Winter Jazzfest (January ...

ZEALnyc, December 19, 2017
Legendary guitarist Mike Stern will be joined by Randy Brecker (trumpet), Tom Kennedy (bass guitar) and Dennis Chambers (drums) for the week leading up to Christmas, and we’re sure this residency will make the season bright. Beginning on Tuesday, December 19 through ...

By Christopher Johnson, Contributing Writer, December 15, 2017
For all that it’s alleged to be Central Command for the War on Christmas, New York City sure goes ape for the holidays. In the month of December alone, New York probably fields more performances of Messiah than South Dakota has ...

By Dan Ouellette, ZEALnyc Senior Editor, December 11, 2017
Two years ago Kenny Barron brought his piano magic to the Village Vanguard in the holiday season. This year he’s aboard for two six-day stands at the club he calls home. The National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master (class of ...

By Dan Ouellette, ZEALnyc Senior Editor, November 30, 2017
While top-tier pianist Jason Moran has had a busy year working with a big band—most notably his strikingly reimagined tour celebrating the historic Thelonious Monk Town Hall Concert in 1959—he slimmed down his format to trio for his ...

ZEALnyc, November 27, 2017
Do you remember all those variety show holiday specials from yesteryear? Well, you can relive that experience on December 3rd at the Laurie Beechman Theater (407 West 42nd Street) when multi-faceted entertainer and arts advocate Richard Skipper hosts one of his ...